Many working environments present explosion hazards or present a risk of electrical shock. One hazardous environment is a pumping station or a tank that contains hazardous and/or flammable or volatile gases or liquids and chemicals to be pumped. Float switches are commonly used in applications of this sort to detect levels for activation of a pump (see FIG. 2), but float switches generally have an electrical current that passes through wires and a switch housed within the float, such as a mercury switch located in the float. Wires from the float switch run to a control panel (or other device) located external to the tank or pit and are located outside the hazardous area. Some specialty control panels are explosion proof and can be located in the hazardous area. As liquids rise in the tank, the float tilts and a ball or conductive liquid, such as mercury, moves and makes contact with an electrical switch or contacts of some sort causing the switch to activate. An electrical current then passes from the control panel through the wires, to the switch, completing the circuit. These all present a spark hazard, and if a breakdown in insulation occurs along the electrical path, an explosion can result.
Some tanks containing flammable liquids or gases use ultrasonic level detection which sends a sonic burst to the surface of the liquid and then back. The transit time of the beam is used to determine the liquid level (some alternative devices use radar or microwave radiation as an energy packet instead of a sound wave, and other sensing technologies are used in level detection, e.g. magnetostrictive, submersible pressure transducers, bubblers, capacitance, etc.).
No electrical current is used within the tank or pit and the transmitter and receiver are located external to the hazardous atmosphere, usually mounted on the external tank surface, with the sensing device positioned in the tank. This technique is not generally used to remotely signal a device, such as a signal to engage/disengage a pump (such as a dosing pump) at discrete levels, as these level detectors will detect all fluid levels requiring additional logic circuits to select a predetermined height or level for operation of a pump, thereby raising the complexity and expense of such a system.
In some hazardous environments, explosion proof containers are used to contain equipment or devices that may present a possible sparking hazard, such as controls, pumps, motors, etc. While pumps or other devices located in a hazardous environment may be contained in an explosion proof housing, these devices must be activated or deactivated by electrical signals (e.g. providing power to the device). Activation is done remotely from the hazardous environment to reduce the possibility of explosion. Hence, when an operator is onsite, the operator cannot manually activate/deactivate the device within the hazardous area unless the activation device is in an explosion proof housing. It would be desirable to have a switch that could be located within the hazardous environment that could be used to manually activate/deactivate the powered device, and have the switch not present an arcing hazard, and would not have to be located in an explosion proof housing.